The ground is shifting for financial crime. A new INTERPOL report unpacks the regional specializations of cybercrime in Africa, with mobile money fraud concentrated in the East and BEC scams in the West. Meanwhile, a Finextra long-read details how AI is increasingly used to exploit human psychology, not just system vulnerabilities, making authorized push payment fraud a growing threat.
South Africa's National Treasury has published a draft bill that would give banks a formal role in helping the South African Revenue Service (SARS) combat tax fraud. The proposed 2026 Draft Tax Administration Laws Amendment Bill would require banks to identify and temporarily freeze potentially fraudulent tax refunds for up to two business days while SARS investigates.
Why it matters
This represents a significant change to ZAR settlement mechanics, inserting banks as an active screening layer for SARS-originated payments. For payment processors, this introduces a new potential point of delay and friction for any payments related to tax refunds. It signals a move towards tighter, distributed regulatory enforcement within the financial system itself, which could eventually be expanded beyond tax fraud to other areas of compliance.
Contradicting the recent stabilization and narrowing rate gap we've tracked following CBN interventions, the Nigerian Naira has fallen to N1,410 against the dollar on the parallel market, while the official rate hovers around N1,368. The renewed depreciation is driven by seasonal demand for forex for summer travel and tuition, compounded by a reported $120 million drop in the Central Bank's external reserves.
Why it matters
The widening gap between official and parallel market rates, coupled with dwindling reserves, directly contradicts the CBN's recent narrative of stability. This heightened volatility creates significant operational risk for any business managing cross-border payments in Nigeria. For your payment gateway, it complicates FX repatriation, makes pricing for multinational merchants difficult, and increases the real cost of settlement, undermining the predictability needed for e-commerce.
Interswitch Group and Swiss banking software firm Temenos announced on Thursday they are expanding their partnership, with backing from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), to upgrade digital banking technology in Nigeria and other African countries. The collaboration aims to provide financial institutions with advanced core banking, digital banking, and payment service capabilities.
Why it matters
This partnership signals a significant, regulator-backed overhaul of the foundational banking infrastructure in Nigeria. For a payment gateway, a modernized core banking stack at partner banks could translate into more reliable APIs, faster settlement times, improved interoperability, and the ability to launch more sophisticated products. It's a crucial infrastructure upgrade to watch, as it could reduce the technical debt many fintechs inherit when integrating with legacy bank systems.
Signifyd's 2026 State of Fraud Report, released Thursday, reveals a 33% increase in e-commerce fraud pressure in the first four months of 2026. The report attributes the spike to AI tools that are enabling more sophisticated and scalable attacks. Account takeover (ATO) attacks surged by 78% and card-testing attacks by 175%, with fraud now expanding beyond checkout to areas like Buy Online, Pick-up in Store (BOPIS) and first-party consumer abuse.
Why it matters
These metrics quantify the industrialization of fraud via AI. The dramatic rise in ATO and card testing indicates that fraudsters are successfully automating the reconnaissance and credential-testing phases of their attacks. For a payment gateway, this means a legacy, checkout-only fraud strategy is no longer sufficient. The battlefield has expanded across the entire customer journey, requiring more comprehensive identity verification and behavioral analysis from the moment a user lands on a site.
A new report from BPC indicates that South African banks could be losing an estimated $160,000 annually in interchange revenue due to outdated, rules-based fraud detection systems incorrectly rejecting legitimate card transactions. These 'false declines' not only result in lost revenue for banks but also damage customer loyalty and sour the checkout experience for merchants.
Why it matters
This report quantifies the hidden cost of overly blunt fraud prevention systems in one of your key markets. It highlights a critical blind spot for many acquiring banks: the focus on minimizing fraud losses often ignores the significant revenue leakage from false positives. This presents a direct opportunity for a payment gateway like yours to differentiate by offering more advanced, AI-driven risk scoring that maximizes approval rates without increasing fraud, a powerful value proposition for merchants.
An analysis in Forbes highlights a rapid shift in AI governance, moving from experimentation to a focus on practical enforcement. As AI is deployed in high-stakes workflows like finance, state-level legislation and court rulings are increasingly mandating 'human in the loop' oversight for automated decisions. This is pushing companies to build systems that can explicitly document human involvement and review.
Why it matters
This trend has direct implications for using AI in your payment stack. Regulators are signaling that fully autonomous 'black box' systems for critical decisions—like fraud detection or chargeback handling—will not be defensible. Building auditability and clear 'human-in-the-loop' intervention points into your AI-powered tools from the start is becoming a legal and compliance necessity, not just a best practice.
A US appeals court on Wednesday overturned a temporary ban against Perplexity, allowing its AI-powered shopping tools to continue operating on Amazon's platform. The court ruled that Amazon was unlikely to prove Perplexity's AI agents violated computer-hacking laws, drawing a key legal distinction between a user deploying an agent to access a site on their behalf and a company performing direct, unauthorized access.
Why it matters
This is a landmark ruling for the future of 'agentic commerce'. It provides legal clarity that could accelerate the development and adoption of AI agents that perform tasks, including purchasing, for users. For payment processors, this confirms that the 'buyer' will increasingly be a piece of software. It necessitates building payment flows and authentication methods that are machine-friendly and can securely handle transactions initiated by autonomous agents, representing a new and potentially large transaction channel.
INTERPOL's full 2026 African Cyberthreat Assessment adds geographic granularity to the 55% AI-involvement rate and $484 million in fraud losses we tracked earlier this week. While Southern Africa remains the most targeted overall, the report maps distinct regional vectors: West Africa is operating as a hub for Business Email Compromise (BEC) scams, while East Africa is seeing a heavy concentration of mobile money fraud and ransomware.
Why it matters
This report provides a crucial, data-driven map of the African fraud landscape. The regional specialization means a one-size-fits-all approach to risk management is inadequate. Payment gateways need to tailor their fraud models and risk rules based on the specific threats prevalent in each market—prioritizing mobile money and SIM-swap vectors in Kenya, for example, while focusing on BEC and invoice fraud signals for Nigerian B2B transactions. The doubling of losses underscores the escalating financial risk.
According to a report from The Economist, African nations, with Egypt at the forefront, are actively accelerating their move away from the US dollar for trade settlement. This shift involves pursuing currency swap agreements with China, converting dollar-denominated loans to yuan, and leveraging the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS) for intra-continental trade.
Why it matters
This structural shift in trade finance creates both opportunities and complexities. While reducing reliance on the dollar can lower transaction costs and FX volatility for some trade corridors, it also fragments liquidity. Payment gateways will need to support a more diverse set of settlement currencies and rails, including direct CNH/yuan settlement and integration with PAPSS, to remain competitive and serve merchants trading with Asia and within Africa.
As stablecoins gain traction for payments, particularly with initiatives like Visa's Stablecoin Platform, a new analysis from CryptoSlate argues the critical bottleneck is shifting from on-chain transactions to the 'last mile': foreign exchange (FX) and local currency settlement. While stablecoins simplify the cross-border movement of dollar value, their utility hinges on efficient conversion into local currencies for real-world spending.
Why it matters
This analysis correctly identifies the central operational challenge for using stablecoins in African e-commerce. Global USD liquidity is useful, but without deep, 24/7 on-ramps and off-ramps to currencies like the Rand, Shilling, and Naira, stablecoins remain a niche solution. For a payment provider, the value is not in just accepting USDC, but in providing seamless, low-cost settlement from USDC into a merchant's local bank account. The competitive frontier is in the FX layer, not the blockchain layer.
African cross-border fintech CLEA has launched a new vendor payment solution, allowing African businesses to pay international suppliers directly from their CLEA accounts. The company reports the stablecoin-powered platform has already processed over $20 million in transactions in its first six months, initially supporting USD payments to US-based suppliers.
Why it matters
This is a direct competitor and validation of the B2B cross-border payments space. CLEA is tackling a core pain point for African merchants—paying overseas suppliers—using stablecoin rails. Their early traction and focus on specific corridors (e.g., vehicle auctions) demonstrate a targeted market entry strategy. For APS, this highlights the demand for solutions that abstract away the complexity of international B2B payments and FX.
Following the gazetting of Kenya's new Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASP) Regulations, experts are warning of unintended consequences. Pankaj Bengani, a prominent voice in African digital finance, cautioned that granting the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) broad power to restrict foreign-issued stablecoins like USDT could fragment the market and increase cross-border payment costs if local alternatives lack global reach and liquidity.
Why it matters
This highlights the direct risk that Kenya's new regulations pose to the efficiency of cross-border commerce. If the CBK aggressively restricts access to globally accepted dollar-backed stablecoins, it could disrupt a key rail for international trade and settlement. This would force payment providers to navigate a more complex, less liquid, and potentially more expensive landscape, directly impacting settlement options for foreign merchants selling into Kenya.
AI-Driven Fraud Industrializes, Exploiting Psychology over Systems New reports from INTERPOL and Signifyd show AI is used in over half of African cybercrime, doubling financial losses. The tactics are shifting from technical exploits to scalable social engineering, like authorized push payment fraud, which targets human behavior and is harder for traditional systems to detect.
African Regulators Tighten Grip on Financial Flows A wave of regulatory action is underway. South Africa's draft tax laws would deputize banks to freeze suspicious refunds. Kenya's new VASP rules are causing experts to warn of market fragmentation. Nigeria is establishing a certified cloud provider register, formalizing data localization.
Stablecoins Confront the 'Last Mile' Problem While Western Union launches a stablecoin wallet, the conversation is shifting to the complexities of real-world use. New analysis highlights that on-chain liquidity is insufficient; efficient crypto-to-fiat conversion and local currency settlement remain the critical bottleneck for merchant adoption.
Nigeria's Forex Stability Comes Under Question Despite the Central Bank's narrative of rising reserves and stability, the Naira has plunged to N1,410 on the parallel market. The widening gap between official and black-market rates signals underlying stress from seasonal demand and reserve depletion, creating significant currency risk.
Agentic Commerce Infrastructure Takes Shape The legal and technical foundations for AI-driven commerce are being laid. A US court ruling clarifies the legality of AI shopping agents, while a new partnership brings agentic AI to instant bank payments. This indicates a future where payment gateways must cater to machine-to-machine transactions.
What to Expect
2026-10-01—Nigeria is scheduled to launch its national register of certified cloud infrastructure providers.
2026-11-04—Deadline for cryptocurrency platforms in Kenya to comply with new VASP regulations.
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